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Once again the sun was shining, hight temperatures with aholiday-ish feel, all be in strange surroundings – we are staying at 101 Outdoor Creation Space which is at the former military base by Greenham Common. Our accommodation takes the form of box-park style cabins adjoining the warehouse. inside are a mix or spaces for fabricating, rehearsing, meeting and eating. We’re in the dance studio and next to us are Theatre Temoin, another Without Walls Blueprint R&D company who are redeveloping a show for the outdoor arts. Sharing the space with another group of artists allows opportunities to reflect on the making with others as it happens, and good gameplay at the end of the day- last night in the form of Labyrinth , a board game about opening and closing pathways.

We started the day welcoming two new members of the gang, Rowan James and Katie Storer. Katie has worked with Mufti games many times and is a game inventing guru, while Rowan has come in as ‘access provocateur.’ While working on MASSIVE BATTLESHIPS in 2015, we wanted to effectively open it out to Deaf audiences. Our version of the Naval guessing game uses visual signals to send co-ordinates over long distance, so it made sense to ensure the whole experience was accessible to Deaf audiences. I phoned Shape Arts at the time and had a conversation with Nick who said-(I‘m paraphrasing) ‘yes, fine- but what about wheelchair access, how about sight? Whats your experience then?’ His style was very direct and his comments stuck, so when I was putting together this team, creating a show that would be in public space about a universal right and need- housing, it felt right to advertise for a provocateur to shake up our concepts of accessibility and force us to think about how we deliver this work in an inclusive way.

Rowan gave a short talk to kick things off then spent the day working with us as a devisor, but asking us to think about things in a different way. “I don’t identify as disabled as something that is wrong with me, i use it politically, as a mode of power.” He was interested in this project because there is a clear link between disability and poverty within the housing crisis. He asked us to think aboutwhen we have been uncertain, in housing and to think about what we can’t do- how we are disabled. He talked about arranging spaces to be wheelchair accessible and generally to be friendly, including and just think about other peoples needs. If our work contains instructions, then to pitch them in a range of ways that don’t target anyone. A headphone experience for instance in is quite common now, and allows opportunity to create audio description. Written instructions can use a range of language, and pictures to get across an idea.

Next, we headed off into Newbury on reconnaissance, looking at where our games might sit in the public realm.

I introduced the group to #oneplaything, an exercise we started playing with at Counterplay Leeds. It’s a simple provocation- using chalk, you write invitations or playful instructions in public spaces in order to allow the reader to consider the space inplayful way, or have a different perspective on the space. It might be as bold as JUMP! or it might be a snakes and ladders board. We evolved into provoking thought about housing, a drain with a chalk sign ‘£495 PCM, own swimming pool’ and a property ladder hopscotch. We also lay seeds: “what used to be here?” “what could be next?” outside anempty shop. #oneplaything is a great, simple provocation to play the city. We’ve been encouraging people to take part and some, like Lynn Parker have been really dedicated. Put #oneplaything into Twitter and start your own #oneplaything games where you live.

We also visited a church yard and felt how different the space was from the surrounding high streets. An immediate oasis as you walked through the archway- suddenly you could hear birdsong, smell flowers and felt peace.

Post lunch we started putting the work into action. We played with 6 ideas:

There was a great deal of shared excitement about the group that have been brought together. Creative technology, activism, architecture, history, sound design, immersive experiences, movement and dance, song, spirituality, game design, accessibility- all these different angles coming together to test ideas for the show felt like a great decision.

Jesse Jones is facilitating the week, he started us off asking us what our culture is,- and to talk about what ever that question means to us. Where we come from, how we see our selves and what our identity is, what we believe in and where that has come from. How our lives have shaped us.

Belief became a strong word for the day. This project asks questions of the housing sector, a sector that makes some very rich and others homeless. Our housing system is rigged to create winners and losers and we are all tied up in the narrative, so asking what we believe in become a theme of the afternoon. We played a game taken from a Gob Squad show where we wrote statements we agree with and on reading them out, physically stood with or against the statement, this developed into ‘dancing for the statement’- ‘dancing for what you believe in’ and at points created a mass dance troop. Some statements were deep, and serious, others frivolous and fun. We all found ourselves dancing for ‘We own our own drills’ – 10 people all owning drills! It was a glorious moment.

We talked about where we live, and where we have lived, our status, our fears and concerns. We threw down ideas about what excited us with the project and what scared us. Late into the afternoon we made lists of problems and causes, possible interventions or games and hopeful ‘take homes’ for the audience. Having been ‘in this’ for a year or so, reading, writing, meeting and experimenting, I have gathered a huge amount of research.Today was the day to invite 9 other people into the process and hear what they had to say. I left feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, inspired and terrible excited about what this fantastic group of people might make together. Several times we said ‘yes, but do I have the right to….’ and actually, yes I think we do have the right, we have the right to publicly question what is wrong with the housing system and invite others to question it too.

Asking for one word each at the end of the day we can ‘co-operate, belief, complexity and…. ‘F*CK’

Ferguson’s Gang was galvanised into action by Clough Wiliams-Ellis’ book ‘England and The Octopus’. First published in 1928 it is an essay chastising the carving up of countryside through ribbon developments and a call to arms that helped pave the way for subsequent planning and conservation acts.

The language is wonderfully theatrical and dramatic:

“you may ravish and defile the most divine landscape in the world, and your children will rise up and call you progressive. You are a “lucky prospector” or a “successful real estate operator” or a “live wire” and what local newspapers call “a prominent and respected citizen”.

and the structure of the essays has theatrical qualities. Talking about good architecture, he asks questions of a building:

“are you practical…are you an efficient house, shop or school…Are you beautiful, or did you seem so to those who built you?…..Are you a good neighbour, Do you do-as-you-would-be-done-by?”

Most striking of all, is how relevant the text is today, and although he was writing about conservation, much of his questions and rants fit perfectly within the themes surrounding our current housing crisis. He champions the garden city and all it stands for. Talks highly of community owned developments and puts down dollar driven housebuilding that puts profit before people and environment.

Much of the text is dated and is fun to look back at how someone might be disgusted by ‘modern bungalows’ and houses that we would now see as beautiful and charming, but the call to arms, the trust of the book is so modern and relevant that it breeds excitement to me as a theatre-maker, but sadness at how little we have moved on.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet with Darren Beatson, Senior Co-ordinator (Records and Archives) at the National Trust.

He gave me a huge amount of archive material related to Ferguson’s Gang, mainly photos of every page of ‘the boo’s’ – the gang’s notebooks- containing receipts for donations they gave to the National Trust, blow by blow breakdowns of gang rituals, reports of each stunt they undertook and press cuttings of the stunts, which give a brilliant selection of perspectives on each event.

We get a real insight into the playfulness of the gang. The code language used and the world they were playing in.

We’ll be using the boo’s as source material for making the show next week, but I thought I’d share a little here.

All images courtesy of National Trust. The originals are held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

It was very evident in speaking to the children at Perry Court that the architecture of the urban planning could have significant effects on their access to the playpark and their experience of accessing and using the park. Currently they walk through a wide open space to access the park. They feel safe as they are in the open, able to be seen and able to see others. If the children are forced to access the playpark via an enclosed route- an alley or street for instance, because of encroaching housing, they immediately feel concerned for their safety. Older children can seem threatening for the younger ones and during conversations at the playpark we were told that the skate park and play park naturally segregate older from younger in positive way- they each have their zones. When older ones use the playpark, younger ones can feel threatened, so encountering older children in, and on the way to the park can be a worry for younger children. Older children are not the only threat, it could be adults too, but the main thing is that encountering people in an enclosed space is a worry, while being in an open space is good. They feel safe, watched and free. It is evident that if access route was to be constricted, some young people would stop going to the playpark, at least would stop accessing it from Hengrove Park.”

We used paper aeroplanes to ‘send’ messages to the council. Children wrote on the planes and we flew them into the cockpit of the large, blackboard plane.

Messages were very varied, lots about wildlife and space to play. The one that really stuck out to me as sending a message though was:

““Dear whoever came up with this idea- no offence but I’m not liking the big pile of houses because it’s just ruining the environment. Please take this.”